EPA Smart Growth Guidelines

Jonathan Rose Companies and Wallace Roberts & Todd recently joined efforts to develop smart growth planning tools for small towns in America. The project is supported by the U.S. EPA and the Connecticut's Capitol Region Council of Governments. Using rural and small town sites in Connecticut planned for development, the initiative was created in collaboration with local planning officials and community members through meetings and public workshops. The resulting report will address smart growth development from a marketability and design perspective, and provide planning officials, policy makers and communities with development and design guidelines that promote green, livable, welldesigned and economically viable communities.

Jonathan Rose Companies served as planner for a team of national experts assembled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to engage residents, decision-makers and developers from Hartford and the surrounding region to develop strategies to create compact, mixed-use, mixed-income housing that provides residents with better access to jobs and services.

The project represents the convergence of issues that are of critical importance to Connecticut's residents: better energy efficiency in homes, lower housing costs, and greater choices in transportation and less dependency on cars. It lays a roadmap for towns and cities as they seek to create more housing options for young workers, aging households, and families at all income levels.

The project resulted in strategies to guide land use patterns toward economically and environmentally sound development sites throughout the region, and in specific planning and design guidelines transferable to rural and small town localities throughout the state and the nation.